Tag: Authority Zero

I can count on one hand the amount of local bands that I followed in high school that still perform today. Of that handful, there is one that has elevated to an international success and I keep purchasing every release to date. That band is Authority Zero. When I first found them, it was twenty years ago when I got my driver’s license and started finding my taste in music. The first lineup I knew was Jason DeVore, Jeremy Wood, Bill Marcks, and Jim Wilcox. I made every effort to…

There are a few events that put together music in my favorite ways in Phoenix. One unfortunately came to an end in Viva PHX, while others continue to flourish like the Indie 500 at the Trunk Space. An event on that list, that I have loved every time I’ve attended, is the Phoenix Rock Lottery. In the six years, I’ve only missed the first one and last year’s due to an overlapping commitment. It is put together by Psyko Steve and the ticket sales benefit Rosie’s House. The rules are…

Album releases tend to fit into a certain mold. They usually involve getting together with a band’s friends and playing all the new stuff off of that album. Although in this case, circumstances changed that. We found ourselves with an entire locals showcase to celebrate the new Authority Zero album. This night there was a familiar cast in front of them with Torn at the Seam, Nomada, Madd Dog Tannen, and Good Boy Daisy. This genre spreading cast did a superb job to lead up to one of my favorite…

The last song of a Warped Tour was played on Sunday, in West Palm Beach and with Pennywise performing it. Huge props to Kevin Lyman, who put on the tour for 24 years. He managed to not only maintain a successful tour for over two decades, but evolve it to survive the entire period. It started as a punk dominated festival in its first decade. Then to the vein of a lot of vocal punks, found the blossoming Emo and Hardcore scenes as they were coming up in the 2000’s…

This idea came about as an exercise floating around the Facebook news feeds. The question was, what was the ten most influential albums on your life? For me, this was a chance go reminisce. To dig and research a little, correcting a little of my memories on what I heard before what. It brought out a couple of many stories I seem to have around my music experiences. Plus this will give you some insights into how my music tastes formed to where they sit today. So in not any…

While the locals list is certainly the more special list to me, that national list is a good glimpse into my personal taste. The national list of favorites I expanded to fifteen to include bands that aren’t local, but would be considered local if I did live in their city. There was certainly a couple that I felt blended in and beat a few of the national acts. So with that in mind, let’s go down the list from fifteen to my favorite album of 2017. Side note, a couple…

Around twenty three years ago, NOFX released their fifth album, “Punk in Drublic.” Flash forward to now and it has become a full-fledged beer sampling, punk rock show. Phoenix was lucky enough to be added to the list of cities hosting the festival. The line ups vary from city to city with NOFX across the board joined by multiple amazing punk bands such as Bad Religion, Bad Cop/Bad Cop, Less than Jake, Goldfinger, and more. The Phoenix stop had the line-up of NOFX, Bad Religion, Goldfinger, Authority Zero, and Guttermouth…

“Broadcasting to the Nations” marks the six album release from Authority Zero on a label. Including prior independent releases that puts the notch up to eight. This marks nearly two decades of music from one of the few punk bands to come out of Phoenix with a following across the world. This release show brought one of my favorite punk bands, Guttermouth, to town alongside four local openers with more of a reggae and rock leaning. The first of the night’s lineup was Howard Til Midnight. These guys were the…

Last month I got invited to not only watch Authority Zero from backstage, but also got a photo pass for some great shots you can find in my full write up of the show here. The other amazing part of it was the guys in Authority Zero were kind enough to sit down to answer some questions for me. I got to find out how the guys met to talking about the upcoming album. They are adamantly excited about it, plus make me super envious of not visiting Japan yet.…

I’ve been listening and watching Authority Zero for nearly two decades now. My first album was Patches in Time, but my sixteen year old self was catching them on the Ska Punk Show before that. I can recite almost all the lyrics to any album released before I became a slave to the GameStop corporate machine in 2006. After that, I got pulled out of the scene for a few years only to hit an occasional bigger show. Attention and time unfortunately eaten by the salaried job. Even so, I…